Field
Various features generally relate to inhalation devices, and more specifically, to devices for extracting ingredients from a substance, such as a plant-based substance, through vaporization.
Background
The extraction of natural ingredients from substances such as plant-based substances (e.g., herbs, botanicals, tobacco, marijuana, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) containing substances, etc.) has been found to have significant benefits both inside and outside the medical community. While one extraction method involves placing the product in a convenient form such as a pill to control the release rate and amount of the ingredients after ingestion, the benefits of directly inhaling the active ingredients into the circulatory system have desirable effects too. Such inhalation methods circumvent the drawbacks associated with first digesting the product to process it into the bloodstream.
For this and other reasons, one common way of extracting the ingredients from a substance through inhalation is simply obtained from smoking the substance by applying fire directly to it to burn the substance and inhale the desired ingredients as they are released. However, several disadvantages arise in light of inhaling undesirable particulate along with the desired ingredients. More specifically, smoke particles enter and irritate the user's throat and lungs and introduce additional hazards to the user's body. Prolonged smoking introduces significant health risks in the mouth, throat, lungs and heart of the user. In addition, applying fire directly to the substance burns up a significant amount of the quantity resulting in using more than necessary to acquire the desired dosage and or effect.
Several devices which have reached the commercial marketplace seek to avoid the concerns caused by smoking an herbal product such as tobacco and/or marijuana. These devices seek to overcome the drawbacks of smoking by removing the smoke and carcinogens from the inhalation process as well as the odor caused by the smoke by vaporizing the herbal product instead of burning it with flame applied directly to the product. Some of these commercially available devices are large, unwieldy vaporization devices that are strictly devoted for vaporization.
One such example includes a vapor collecting chamber or balloon surrounding or coupled to a plate upon which the desired quantity of an herb is placed. The plate is heated to vaporize the herbs until the chamber is filled with a desired quantity of vapor. The vapors collected in the chamber may be withdrawn by inhaling from a tube connected to a passage leading to the interior of the chamber. However, such a device is not easily portable, may be expensive, and can only be used for vaporization purposes. The hot plate may also take several minutes to reach a sufficient temperature for vaporization causing undesirable delay.
There is a need for an herbal vaporizer that is portable, lightweight, effective, fast, and may be used with a variety of existing pipes and water pipes that are conventionally used for smoking herbal products. Such an herbal vaporizer would allow the user to easily carry the vaporizer for use with their own or others' pipes and water pipes thereby obviating the need to invest in a large and cumbersome device strictly dedicated to vaporization.